John Keats

“Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.”

— John Keats

“Now a soft kiss - Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss.”

— John Keats

“I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of imagination.”

— John Keats

“You speak of Lord Byron and me there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.”

— John Keats

“There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.”

— John Keats

“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”

— John Keats

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases it will never pass into nothingness.”

— John Keats

“I will give you a definition of a proud man: he is a man who has neither vanity nor wisdom one filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise.”

— John Keats

“Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.”

— John Keats

“I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion - I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more - I could be martyred for my religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that.”

— John Keats

“'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

— John Keats

“Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever.”

— John Keats

“Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.”

— John Keats

“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”

— John Keats

“What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.”

— John Keats

“Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.”

— John Keats

“I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.”

— John Keats

“Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.”

— John Keats

“Love is my religion - I could die for it.”

— John Keats

“There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.”

— John Keats